Can We Ban The Copyright Laws?

This post satisfies the assignment for the 4th week of the OERCourse given at Wikiversity. Participants were asked to assess the current status of Copyright law and discuss Lawrence Lessig’s call for “free culture”. Source materials included Wikipedia’s History of Copyright law, ”Free Culture” a (anti/copyright) presentation by Mr. Lessig and review of ”Towards a Global Learning Commons: cclearn”, published in Educational Technology Magazine November 2007 special issue devoted to Open Educational Resources.

At the outset it must be noted that the entire subject matter presented is a vast one the subtleties of which cannot be digested in a mere four hours. That said, the readings presented a geographical perspective of the historical background that resulted in the contemporary status of Copyright as we know it. I was impressed by the presentation by Lawrence Lessig, whose impassioned plea compared well with that of Richard Baraniuk , of “Connections” fame. Yet I was surprised at the intensity of the debate between the free as opposed to the proprietary software school. 

Mr. Lessic correctly describes a situation where copyright law has evolved from a plane where it once monopolized the publication of creative works to an environment of complete freedom to the present retrenchment, where even copying and the creation of derivative works are regulated. This portrait is dominated by a system  lawyers and legislators whose sole purpose is to expand the number of software patents, resulting in the present loss of previously unregulated works in the public domain or those subject to fair use. The objection is that so called “open source” software is not free because developments in technology and the Copyright law itself has improperly expanded to include control over access [freedom to read only at the website], copying and even over derivative works – a situation that is at least similar to the dreaded publishing monopolies made obselete by Donaldson v. Beckett and its progeny. Mr. Lessic urges limits on the power of the Past to control future creativity and advocates all out war against legal and legislative controls over creativity. He reasons that an environment of “free culture”  will lead to the maximum creative impulse and that we must fight for a “transparent creativity”, a free and open sharing of knowledge and for the arrest of the growth of software patents as the latter’s only function is to “exclude future competitors.”

The present status of Copyright in the U.S. is deeply rooted in fundamental notions about “intellectual property rights” and the desire to compensate risk-takers for their effort. In 1980, Congress amended the federal copyright statutes so that they covered computer programs. The courts interpreted these statutes to protect the creator of software from copying, as well as from translating into foreign languages. This expansion in the law spawned a race to the U.S. Patent Office (“USPO”) to patent any and every known procedure, useful or not. One egregious example is multinational corporation IBM’s “bathroom patent“ [on taking a number to use the can]! IBM’s application was ultimately denied but it shed some light on the race to acquire patents. According to Jon Dudas, the current Director of the USPO, protecting intellectual property is only one reason for seeking patents: “Wall Street loves it when companies file patents, since patent numbers can be used as an easy proxy for innovation and R&D work. The sheer number of patents can also make it easier to strike cross-licensing agreements with other companies, as it makes a given patent portfolio look broader and stronger.”

It is argued that software developers’ use of licenses, closed source code and the threat of legal action to protect their expanded intellectual property interests does not foster innovation, therefore there are serious challenges on many fronts, most recently by End Software Patents, a newly minted U.S. coalition whose sole purpose is to advocate new legislation exempting software and business methods from Patent law and to help companies fight such patents in the courts and at the U.S. Patent Office.

Because U.S. law allows patents on software and on business methods, some amount of proprietary works will exist, which means that restrictive licensing cannot be avoided. That being so, the most difficult question facing the software industry is “what is a derivative work of software”? Clearly, if an open source license does not include a reciprocity condition, a derivative work will not cause a problem. The problems will arise in those other cases in which it must be determined whether a software program is a derivative work of another software program. There, it would be a question of the quantity of source code required to create a derivative work. The quantity of source code one may legitimately copy before creating an infringing derivative work is important to licensees, who want to avoid reciprocity conditions of open source licenses, as well as to creators, who want to enforce the reciprocity conditions. Still, there is no question that disputes over whether particular softare is a derivative work of licensed software will most certainly develop. 

Protection of intellectual property rights and profit-making incentives are priorities that will likely not permit the wholesale “free culture” Mr. Lessig talks about. Our free market society permits the “theft” of resources from the public domain and the repackaging thereof in products that are subject to restrictive licensing. However it may be fair to conclude that ”John Public” is not motivated enough to wage the war suggested by Mr. Lessig because such war demands too much on the part of the end-user. Here is a paper that provides quantitative data showing that in many cases, using open source software is a reasonable or even superior approach to using their proprietary counterparts, yet open source software and products are not the number one choice for consumers.

 

“Towards a Global Learning Commons” conclusion that the open learn movement cannot deliver on its goal to transform the conditions for teaching and learning worlwide because “much of what is currently considered ‘free and open’ is legally, technically and/or culturally incompatible” confirms Mr. Lessic’s assertion regarding the barriers built into open source technology. More interestingly though, the article contains a blueprint of the steps that may be necessary if open learning institutions intend to fulfill their mission.

OER: Philosophical Background

This post satisfies the assignment for this the 3rd week of a course on creating free online educational resources given by Wikiversity. Last week, Course participants had the opportunity to try creatimg an open educational resource; this week we are charged with reviewing scholarly material discussing the philosophical underpinnings of the open course movement and writing a blog post describing that experience.

Summary Conclusion

The required readings for this week came at the right time for me in that a number of issues related to free online educational resources were placed into perspective – just as the reading by Ilkka Tuomi did in the first week. I finally understand the importance and need for Unix OS X and Linux and why all the free materials I found were almost always run on non-proprietary operating systems. Regarding substance, the assignment breaks down the free education movement into distinct historical periods, however a closer reading suggests that the Present, pehaps exemplified by the free software movement, is really a seamless connection of each period building upon the previous one to culminate into the ever-changing here and now. Finally, in terms of free, online educational resources, the Enlightenment Age thinkers’ goal of delivering learning material to the “third class” may soon be accomplished, however the question remains whether the “third class” has knowledge about or access to those resources.

Analysis 

The most important thread that tied the readings together for me was the evolution of the democratizing ideals popularized during the Age of Enlightenment (also known as the “Age of Reason“) to such extent that today, the words liberty, fraternity and equality contemplate the broadest range of daily life situations and affairs over which man should retain control.

The Present age is similar to the Age of Reason in that the inhabitants of both periods engaged an intense critical analysis of the question of the nature of man, his problems and the institutions that govern him. Poeple during the Age of Enlightenment, similar to most today, believed that man is a rational being who would function most effectively if he were free from needless restraints. As man needed education in order to exercise his reason, Age of Reason thinkers passionately believed in and called for human progress through education; however they were also inclined to disdain the past and were eager to discard traditional institutions, such as the Church, which was considered the greatest hindrance to man’s freedom.  

That increased insistence on access to education flourished as a priority in succeeding democratic societies is a logical consequence of Enlightenment era’s belief in man’s power to reason and thefore to construct learning institutions to further man’s education. Costs then, as at present, was a factor, resulting in the Poor then, as now, having the least access to educational resources. But note: one interesting statistic gleaned from the reading on “Origins of the public library as a social institution” was the fact that middle and upper-class families took more advandage of public library resources than those families from a lower economic background. This finding raises the substantial issue whether advocacy is a necessary component of open learning programs in order to educate targeted groups about the availability of free edecational resourses.

The Free Software Movement represents an outright expansion of certain of ideas espoused during the Age of Enlightenment. Its aim is to protect the rights of users to access and modify software, a subject of quite some debate – leaving me to ponder the question whether software was an intended beneficiary of the elaborate political and other freedoms crystalized by the French and other revolutionery upheaval? Be that as it may, the vehemence in the divide between the adherents of “free sofware” and those involved with the ”Open Source” initiative is very real, although the practical significance of the debate, as such relates to the end-user, is not very clear.

The success of free computer operating systems and free software will be evaluated based upon user preferences, not socratic distinctions between between the “socio-ethical” versus the “superior” model. While studying the lesson, I decided to try one very highly touted “free software”, OpenOffice (a competitor of Microsoft Office Suite). Result? The most non-user friendly software I have ever tried to use. There were no icons to click on my Desktop. I opened My Documents and was confronted with four cabinets and what appeared to be hundreds of files – I had no idea which to select, so I tried each. Really! The “help” returned me  online to openoffice.org. I was overwhelmed by the monumental documentation or knowledge base. I was sure I would find the answer after wading through it all, but I refused. I simply could not afford to invest so much time into learning how to open an application. I de-installed the free software – it was too difficult. This may be one disadvantage that affects the wider use of what may be an excellent product.  

Initiatives such as Richard Stallman’s GNU Project and others whose goal is to replace proprietary software and restrictive licensing with the free equivalent will likely deliver necessary tools without which open learning initiatives would be a high cost failure. Yet there is still an open question: Is there anything new under the Sun? In my view, Science and ”standing on the shoulder of giants“, a study of the metaphor’s origin and meaning, accurately describes the acquisition and transmission of knowledge as a ladder type process of development, achievement and learning as well. The cumulative nature of the process is reflected in an apt image of a Dwarf that seized the most effective vantage point by attaching himself to the shoulder of a giant. Arguably, this bodes well for the future of the Teaching profession.

Creating OER: LeMill or Wikiversity

This post satisfies the assignment for the 2nd week of the OERcourse at Wikiversity, an online open learning institution. This week’s study is devoted to a formal introduction to Wikiversity and to LeMill, another open learn institution. OERcourse participants were asked to register with LeMill or Wikiversity, contribute something in the form of constructive feedback in discussion forums, editing, or new page creation, then write one blog post about the experience. In addition, participants were asked to join an existing learning resource or study project, as well as start our own new content or wiki-page resource in LeMill or Wikiversity. The following describes my experience in completing this week’s assignment.

A self-described “learning mill” that fosters collaborative learning in the form of unrestricted authoring and sharing of learning resources, my conclusion is that LeMill is designed for teachers, rather than students. Teachers are urged to find, author and share learning resources at will, subject to the creative commons share-alike license. LeMill would be a good place for beginning teachers to hone their skills as one is given the option to create “media pieces”, which are small modules of information (of whatever type) that may be combined later to form a full-blown learning resource, such as a course, or “collections” that the teacher could email to students or post on a blog. This type of piecemeal development of course content prior to publication is clearly advantageous. LeMill teachers also have access to a “Methods” and a “Tools” section where they can observe and benefit from successful procedures adopted by their peers. Added extras are puzzles and maps that should help teachers garner student involvement and “teacher learning stories”, probably similar to this blog post, where teachers are able to reflect on their experience.

In spite of the above, LeMill has the distinct disadvantage – as far as learning goes – of being inaccessible. For example, it was recommended that the participants in this OERcourse hang-out in the #lemill IRC channel. Well, first, I could not login here – perhaps a dead link. But no matter what I did, I was unable to access that service here. I waded through endless code and documentation, little of which I understood. Frustrated, I Googled “web chat for idiots”.  Amazingly, I experienced instant gratification upon delivery of a host called Mibbit. In less than two minutes I was registered and logged in; I searched and found the LeMill client, in addition to another participant in the OERcourse who helped me select and register an IRC name!

Here is another [more substantive] example. I registered at LeMill in order to contribute something in the form of constructive feedback in discussion forums, editing, or new page creation, as required by the OERcourse syllabus. Further, I joined a group dedicated to teaching human rights and social justice to middle school students. I already had all the content at my fingertips and I did not think it would be difficult to propose a Method or Tool related to such teaching. Well my peers, I could not add anything, other than to the forum, although I spent 78 minutes reviewing everything on the site, including the Help and FAQ!

In contrast, Wikiversity is clearly and evidently a venue for students, in the Greek sense. Learners are encouraged to jump in where angels fear to tred, however there are numerous avenues for help, including a greater community and Custodians who see to it that avid learners (I am one such) remain within the confines of written guidelines. Besides, at Wikiversity, a student has the opportunity to learn by example. This method has to be a more effective teaching device since the greatest genius among us must have had some initial guidance and training to placr them on the correct path.

In the final analysis, LeMill and Wikiversity are complementary open learning initiatives. Only after a student acquires a proper foundation can he/she pretend to create anything of value or proceed to teach another. I am an example. The font size in my second post was completely mesed up. I spent hours hop-scotching among various “how to” on the subject of HTML coding. Finally I joined the Wikiversity Web Design course [to satisfy a part of this week's assignment], which suggested that one start at the beginning: what is HTML. I invested a mere two hours on required reading and coding exercises and I am happy to report that I am now capable of creating a basic web page [no flash as yet, please] in terms of headers, fonts etc. 

Rice Connections: Goodbye Textbooks

This post supplements an earlier review of Rice Connections, an open learn solution founded by Rice University Engineer professor, Richard Baraniuk. His vision of the future of textbooks and learning comports with the doctrinal basis of the open learning projects I am learning about in this OERcourse.

Mr. Baraniuk draws an analogy to the current state of the music industry, flattened by digitization and currently symbolized by the freedom to create, rip, mix and burn. In the ideal future learning society, the “shutouts”, those unable to access or share knowledge, will acquire a voice. His dream is a knowledge eco-system powered by XML, which will permit the endless recombination of materials and ideas.

Perhaps due to my education and experience, I am fascinated by the far-reaching consequences of Mr. Baraniuk’s vision, with respect to intellectual property rights. As far as I can gather, the latter will no longer exist, assuming it ever really did – in a philosophical sense. Certainly, the world will not fall apart without the “middlemen” in the publishing industry, all of whom merely serve to drive up costs. However the question remains whether the high cost of education at institutions such as MIT will be similarly affected. I think not, but only time will provide the answer to that question.

Regarding pedagogy, it appears that no one will be able to denote him/her self as a “teacher”, since each student is deemed to be a creator. This raises the fundamental issue of quality control, a significant one in my mind. The answer to this issue may be Mr. Baraniuk’s theory of community authored material subject to a peer review process, much like what may be in place at Wikipedia. I suggest that if the ideal vision plays out, all “free riders” will be forced to step up or be left behind and the profession as “Educator”, as well as the attendant Teaching industry, will no longer be able to sustain itself. 

LeMill Review Update

This post updates my post regarding the third assignement of week 1 of the OERCourse at Wikiversity, an online open learning institution. That assignment required, among other things, review of LeMill, another online open learning institution. My post acknowledged lack of familiarity with the LeMill project, but promised an update once I had sufficiently famaliarized myself with how things worked over there. This post constitutes such update.

For starters, I wrote earlier that LeMill is a “social content” resource [per the definition of Ikka Tuomi] that offered synchronous chat, as well as the creation and sharing of webinars and slideshows. This statement is the furthest thing from the truth – which I hereby unconditionally retract! What happened was I surfed to LeMill and by simply browsing around, without registering, I noted I would need to learn how to create videos and or powerpoint presentations. So I immediately surfed off to find related open learning software and landed at Slideshare, a website that permits users to freely upload presentations, add audio (create a webinar) and share them with the world. Coincidentally, at the time I arrived at Slideshare, one of the featured presentations involved LeMill. Completely forgetting where I was, I posted the above-noted untrue statement. Please forgive me, Teemu and Hans and all the other participants in this OERcourse. 

Now, LeMill appears to be a truly avant garde open learning institution, which I believe is a good example of Mr. Tuomi’s ideas about the future of education and learning societies. I finally registered as a user in preparation for the second week of the OERcourse. At Lemill, the three characteristics of a free educational institutional is completely satisfied as users have the ability to freely use, contribute to and distribute learning resources, subject to the creative commons attribution share-alike license. You can even download the LeMill client and run same on your personal server – apparently without any restriction or attribution whatsoever.

The LeMill open learn option differs markedly from the MIT OpenCourseWare option, for example, in that the user’s creativity is brought more sharply into focus. The courses are not prepared for you; you have to search for and create your own modules of learning or teaching. As such, LeMill may be less intimidating to non-traditional users and may be an effective tool in reaching those who feel constrained by externally imposed restrictions. Furthermore, taken to its logical conclusion, and as predicted by Mr. Tuomi, the tools currently used to assess teaching and learning will likely not be applicable under the LeMill model of education.

Review: Open Education Online Projects

This post constitues the third assignment for the first week of the OER course  at Wikiversity, an online open learning institution. My post related to the first assignment may be viewed here and the second post here. Participants have been asked to review and comment on the the following open learning institutions: Open University (“Open U”), Rice Connections, MIT Open Courseware, LeMill and Wikiversity. This post will review each institution sequentially.

Each of the above open learn initiatives satisfy the requirements, more or less, posited by Ilkka Tuomi in his article “Open Educational Resources: What they are and why do they matter”, which is required reading for this course. I do have personal experience with the Open U. I have been a member since March 2007. Users are given the greatest lattitude in designing their own courses (there are many) and each student has a personal page, in addition to a learning journal where they can record their experiences and share same with others. At the time of my registration at Open U, I had no concept about the philosophy underlying open learning initiatives. I find it interesting that I have come full circle, except now I am operating from a standpoint of knowledge.

This OERcourse is the first place that made me aware of Rice Connections. Besides the connection to Rice University, my interest was piqued in that I am familiar with a charitable initiative called FreeRice, a game that promises to make you smarter, improve your speaking, writing, thinking, grades, job performance and much more. I find this correspondance (French) most refreshing. In any event, I registered an account at Rice Connections to experience first-hand how it worked. I was not disappointed. Playing around with the modules is fun, although Rice Connections is specifically aimed at the publication of scholarly content. For example, at the time I registered, the featured content related to rational functions in high school, understanding basic music theory and chemistry concepts. Rice Connections clearly set forth that in using their learning resources, one is agreeing to be bound by the Creative Commons Attribution License) and US and foreign Copyright Laws and international treaties. That is to say, one is free to use and share the modules, provided attribution is given. They also made it clear that all users’ content was subject to removal, change or other modification without notice. I suggest, based upon Ikka Tuomi’s work, that this resource falls within both the educational and technical domain and that its restrictive feature may be a function of intellectual property rights.  

By reason of this OERcourse I am learning that MIT OpenCourseWare is a leader in the open learning field, although I have been aware of MIT’s project for probably the last 2 years.  Students have access to the highest quality Ph.D, college and high school courses. The breath of MIT’s OpenCourseWare is astounding. Access to the learning resources offered is completly unrestricted in that no user name, email or anything else is required. The only restriction on use is attribution under the creative commons license. Both students and teachers gain acces to the resources by downloading. I have never used any of the resources provided, but I intend to download a course prior to the end of this OERcourse. My opinion is the MIT OpenCourseWare may be freely accessible, however may users may feel intimidated as there is absolutely no feedback or other forum for support. This resource may be most suitable for highly motivated types who can and do prefer to function independently.

Regarding LeMill, this resource falls within Ikka Tuomi’s definition of a “social content” resource and, that being so, it appears to grant the most freedom to users in terms of use and contribution.  But I confess that I am outside of my realm in regards to this resource. Therefore I do request my Wikiversity facilitators to permit me to write a review of this resource later as I am simply not familiar enough at this time. I was not even able to log in. That may have been because I clicked on “web client” under “Class Meetings” on the OERcourse page and was taken here. LeMill apparently offers synchronous chat, as well as the creation and sharing of webinars and slideshows. I am excited about learning to  create videos and uploading them as I am a community volunteer teacher (youths) and I am learning that the visual method is most effective in reaching this audience. Although I am unable to write a proper review of LeMill at this moment, it must be noted that I have already received benefits from this OERcourse: I now know the meaning of “freenode” and “IRC”. Week #2 of the syllabus in this OERcourse includes an introduction to LeMill. I will update this review at that time.

Last, but not least, is Wikiversity. I have no experience using its resources, although I expect that will change very soon by reason of my being enrolled in this OERcourse. One of the assignments in week #2 involve creating or joining a Wikiversity project. I will be able to update this post after that assignment is complete.

Review: I. Tuomi – Open Educational Resources

This post constitutes the second assignment for week 1 of the OER course. My post related to the first assignment may be viewed here. In this assignment, participants are asked to write a commentary on “Open Educational Resources: What they are and why do they matter” (the “Article”), written by Ilkka Tuomi. Mr. Tuomi is the Chief Scientist at Meaning Processing Ltd, an independent research center located in Helsinki, Finland. He has written articles, book chapters and books on computer networks, organizational knowledge management, open source software, and new innovation models.

I found the Article very well-researched in all respects. It is my opinion that it could serve as a primer for those at the entry of their careers in open source initiatives. Prior to reading the Article I knew nothing about open learning creation or the philosophical bases therefor; I now feel I will be able to explain to others, in a general sense, what this means. The facilitators of this OER course did not specify the debth of the requested review. I opt to focus on the main points of the Article as they relate to free and open online educational resources.

The main theme of the Article is that open access to educational resources will radically change the ways in which we learn and create knowledge. It is suggested that open educational resources have the potential to transform institutions of learning, teaching practices and the processes of learning and knowledge creation. Early on, Mr. Tuomi makes it very clear that a distinction must be made among the several different types of resources, and that resources that  generate the most social benefits must be kept open. For example, different criteria are at play in openness in the social domain as opposed to the educational domain and the technical domain, the latter being the subject of heated debate regarding intellectual property rights.

With respect to learning, educators are interested in openness for a number of reasons, the most important being (1) where money is a scarce resource; (2) because it can produce high-quality systems; (3) because learners can modify the system to his/her specific needs; and (4) because openness appears to be a very effective learning model. Mr. Tuomi suggests that open educational resources display 5 basic characteristics: they (a) enable development of individual or social capabilities for understanding and acting; (b) can be enjoyed without restricting the possibilities of others to enjoy them; (c) provide non-discriminatory access to information and knowledge about the resource; (d) generate services that can be enjoyed by anyone with sufficient non-discriminatory capabilities; and (e) can be contributed to by anyone, without restrictions that exceed the norms of open science. These 5 characteristics support the posited theory that openness demands the freedom to use, the freedom to contribute, and the freedom to share.

In terms of the future, Mr. Tuomi believes that advances in open learning creation will have significant consequences: the costs of distributing high-quality learning materials will decline radically; access to knowledge will increase, learners will be asked to create and innovate and educational systems will have to be redesigned to reflect the new business of open learning.

My personal opinion of Mr. Tuomi’s learned piece is that open learning will accomplish its stated goals provided all persons have access to the platforms where open learning is delivered. If that delivery is via the web and the Internet, then everyone needs to have a computer or other device that will permit access to open learning education. Many persons currently do not have access to computers. However most people do or soon will have a cell phone or other mobile communication device. Perhaps the creators of open learning content will structure their material so that same is available on such consumer oriented platforms.

Who Am I

My name is Stewjean. This post satisfies assignment 1 for “Composing free and open online educational resources“, given by Wikiversity, an open learning community. It is a 9-week course, which commenced on March 3rd. “OER” stands for open educational resources. I am not an educator in the formal sense and I have never created an open [or closed] online education resource. I am located in New York City.  

I decided to enroll in the OER course because I volunteered to teach a literacy class to mostly youths in my community. I would like to create an online venue for my students, but I realized I did not have the necessary skills to do so. The reason I would like to create the online community is I believe I would be more effective in reaching my target audience. My hope is that the OER course will teach or at least familiarize me with the multi-media skills necessary to create compelling content attractive to teenagers.